Time & Place: Oh I do love to be beside the Spey

Author Maggie O'Farrell reflects on Highland holidays that inspired her latest book

I’m taking my son, Saul, to the Spey Valley in May; it’ll be his first time in the Highlands and we’ll be taking the sleeper from London to Kingussie. He’ll be almost one by then, maybe just walking. It’s such an important place for me — I set my latest book there.

I’ve been going since I was about 13, with my family. Every year, we stayed in the same house in Kincraig, a village on the banks of Loch Insh, between Kingussie and Aviemore. When we first saw the house, we were staying in an awful cottage nearby. But this place had the most beautiful location: right on the edge of Loch Insh, the front door barely 10 yards from the water’s edge, with a panoramic view of the Cairngorms.

My mother, being of the generation where you talk to anyone, knocked on the door and asked the person who